I hope you all don't mind me posting here in the cottage garden thread. I'm starting a new garden bed where we removed a huge dying spruce and I love the easygoing cottage garden look. I've made baby steps on this huge footprint left by the spruce.

I've transplanted Shasta 'Alaska' from elsewhere since they grow like weeds for me, as well as echinacea which self seeds everywhere. I put in some Asclepius tuberosa and salvia greggii, one of my own daylily seedlings, and rudbeckia maxima. I also planted my favorite filler plant, coreopsis 'electric avenue'.

I hope to post some progress pics as it blooms and matures. Not much to look at yet but I'm having fun

love to see the progress of a new garden

looks to be on a hill,berm,slope?

gardengus said: love to see the progress of a new garden

looks to be on a hill,berm,slope?

Thanks for the acorn Cinda. Yes, that is a hill. It is hilly 'round here and I don't know how to garden on the flat.

Here is my front "yard" from the street



and the new area



Up the steps




The back "yard" with daylily beds (my main obsession)





And continue up the hill to my woodland garden which has been a fun project for a number of years







Okay, that was probably more than you wanted to know.

very nice tour

We repaired the low rustic stone wall today.

What a relief to get some rain today! There are places that are really challenging for a hose.
Things will be really popping in the garden soon.

I too am glad for rain ....and a few days off watering
It seems water keeps things alive but they really grow with rain.

That is such a great way of saying it Cinda. I'm so grateful for the rain even though we really need more.

It won't be long before the crocosmia start blooming which will give a nice punch of red soon.

I love crocosima they have such a unique bloom

I love what you are doing with the area where the spruce died. I, too, have a dying spruce. In fact, it won't be too many years and we will lose quite a few large trees. I dread this because my favorite gardening is shade gardening. Hostas are my passion, as daylilies are yours. I really love your woodland garden! I'm trying to create paths that lead to a view. One of my paths goes between two large evergreen trees with a chippy pergola that my husband built almost twenty years ago for our daughter's wedding held in the yard. It wasn't chippy then! Makes a nice frame for hostas and ferns though, haha.

@jamitysmom Thanks Jan. It is always sad to lose a big tree. All the spruce in the neighborhood succumbed to age and disease. I mourned the tree but tried to look at it as an opportunity to build a new garden space and that has been fun.

Your pergola defines a nice space.

My woodland garden has been suffering from our drought conditions as I can't get the hose back there easily but I trust the hostas and hellebores to soldier through. The ferns and actaea may be going dormant though. I will miss the actaea blooms in the fall and no doubt the birds will miss the seeds next winter. Some of them might make it to bloom.

Daylilies are starting

Beautiful garden photo ...with lots of blooms

Biggest coneflower I have ever seen (6in diameter) brought in by birds a number of years ago and I have been spreading its seed



The crocosmia and coreopsis have entered the game. Next to appear soon are the Shastas.





We have had rain since Wednesday. It has been mostly drizzle so not amount to much in inches but everything is perking up and the grass no longer crunches under my feet.

I guess I am doing something right because strangers walking down the street stop when I am out working in the garden and tell me they enjoy the garden.

Well I may never walk down your street but I DO enjoy your sharing here

Thanks Cinda.

Here are some early evening pics before a strong T-storm cell rolled through. After 2 months of next to no rain we are now getting about an inch each and every day! When it rains it pours. The garden seems happy about moving from a desert to a rainforest.

Beautiful We seem to be in the same rain pattern.Three inches in three days.

Drought monitor says central Maryland is still in severe drought but my garden doesn't think so.



It looks like I should give the spirea a trim but it is too hot and sticky for that work